The subject of this topic is: Should you have to login to read the content of forum posts?

And the answer to that, as far as I am concerned is a most definite and overwhelming "YES"!

The reason being is that now, the entire forum can be trolled by bots and or Google regarding anything one says here. Can we all repeat the word - "P-R-O-F-I-L-I-N-G"... Isn't there enough of that around?

Many forums shield their members from such easy and open exploitation by at least not allowing non-signed in visitors from viewing post contents. Yes, it's a bit more difficult to see what's new, and a perhaps a bit tougher for drive by visitors to find useful info, but to that I say - fine. I feel comfortable writing here for members - not so much for every bot that wanders by...

I would say fine to that but the web site "owners" and "programers" are sort of MIA. Years ago there was going to be an update of the site but that has never materialized. Terl Obar has admin priviledges and keeps it going but it's not his site and I dont think he wants the headache of trying to fix it.

I suppose if its possible to work within the confines of the the old drupal programing and set this up than it could be done. I would support such a move.

I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

It's hardly a ghost site. I actually have full admin control if needed. I just choose not to exercise it, leaving that to the original owner/programmer (CleanCutRogue) and current admin/domain owner (w00t). Since the site sits on my server, and "physical access = complete access", I'll always make sure it is alive and I can make important/critical changes as needed since I'm an admin as well. I've offered in the past to take over full responsibility/ownership of the site but as of yet they haven't wanted to offload it. Until then major changes are up to them.

As to locking down the forum posts, I belive that change is simple enough. Personally, I don't really see a reason for it. I'd rather have the material available for anyone to find than hidden behind a barrier. The community is small enough as it is, I don't really want to make it harder for people to find us and to decide to join in. When I come to a site and I can't look around and see content before I sign in, I'm gone. I'm not going to fork over my information for unknown value. To me that's a major turn off. But that's just me. I'll start up a poll on the main page. If there is an overwelming majority consensus, we can definitely do it. Otherwise, I'll leave it to the actual site owners to decide. Like I said, since it 's not really my site, I exercise these privledges very, very sparingly.

I suppose we should ask about the real need for privacy here? I mean 90% of the conversation is so obviously geeky to an outsider and the biggest political rants are about Lorraine Williams and WOTC with about 1% of the discussion, if that, getting real political or even remotely religious.

I usd my loggin, jedion357 as an online persona and there is plausible deniability for anything I might say here.

I'd be all for this change but I have to wonder at the need on further reflection.

I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

I thought that the project pages were unreadable to the outside word if setup as private. This was to way to have open conversations to attract the public and private conversations that Google and the like couldn't get their robots into. Am I correct?

I think it is great to be able to access the forum (I am not speaking of the projects here) without log-in. It is much easier to get a quick overview from other machines or in restricted areas (when travelling and only having bad-idea security WLAN, for example) without logging in.
But even more, I think that the site is much more attractive to guests if they can have a proper read-through -- and therefore they might become new members. Fully with TerlObar there.
One could think of an "internal area" of forum board(s), but is there really a need for that?

As for profiling, we have our avatars and names for that (if we wish), do we? And BTW it would be easy enough to bar the door for Google and some other bots (only to the forum, and with the logical drawbacks, of course) .

I am cool with guest reading the forum. But what ever you all want to do is fine. I understand the bots/webcrawlers are a pain and we all want privacy...

But my personal privacy was violated years ago: my telephone rings every night at a specific time. There are satelite images of me, my yard, etc. I have already been profiled.

I think Projects should remain private.

LOL, the google earth image of my parents house up in Maine is so old that it predares the huge addition they did in the 1990s and the cars in the yard are long gone. (That is unless its been updated). Satelite images for my area of Boston seem to update at leat once per year to once per two years.

I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

I think things should stay as they are. I always thought that the projects were only able to be viewed if you were a member of that project and then you could also make a project private to exclude any outside lookers. I got hooked on this site, (while at work. shhhhhhhh), and may not have got into it if I needed to join.

As for my profiling, I am pretty sure whoever needs to find who I am and what I do can easily figure that out.

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